ART AFTER HOURS: STUDENTS BENEFIT FROM NIGHT STUDIO CLASS

With as many as a dozen students working in various stages of a project, the art studio at Central High School sometimes gets a little crowded.

But there's always room for instructor Robert Friedrich to walk by offering advice and comments-- and sometimes help -- to aspiring art students.

Friedrich offers a night studio class, which is voluntary, for his art students. The studio is open each Tuesday from 6-9 p.m. and gives students a chance to catch up or work ahead on art projects.

None of the high school students comes because they are required to. They come because they are in love with art -- in whatever form it might take.

In an age when some schools are choosing between fine arts programs or athletics, Friedrich said he hasn't had any trouble finding support for his students and their work. The balance between arts and sports is fairly equal in the district, he said.

The school supports the students' creativity by displaying their work in a case near the front entrance. A flamingo lamp, complete with feathers and a pink light bulb for its face, sits just inside the doorway to the school's main entrance. Now the case is full of pottery and some small lamps.

The seniors currently have an exhibit at Kelsen Gallery, which remains open through Monday.

Sometimes the studio night sessions are designed around a topic, although they began this year as a way to give students more time to work on sculpture projects. Last week the topic was learning how to stretch a canvas for painting.

The studio sessions give students a good basis for continuing their art education, Friedrich said.

About half the students on a recent Tuesday were there to learn about stretching canvas. Others worked with clay or painted expressionist masks.

Friedrich keeps an open-door policy: Students can come and go,

"They can do whatever they want and stay as long as they want," he said. Holding studio night means that Friedrich can expect more of his students in class since they have had extra time to work on projects.

"It's like three days at school because they can work straight through," he said. Class time is only 50 minutes and that includes all the preparations and clean up after a project.

Emily Elias and Zac Fidler came to work on their metamorphosis pots molded from clay. The two seniors were finishing their last art assignment before graduation. The metamorphosis pots are to be clay pots that take on some human shape.

Elias walked into a back room to get her project, set it on a table and headed to the hand extruder to find coils of clay.

The students will use as much as two tons of clay during the school year, working on various projects. Across the room, Junior Brandon Rains was painting some expressionist masks also molded from clay. For that assignment, each student had to create five masks, each with a different expression.

"Painting is part of the expressionism," Friedrich said. "There's a certain mood that each piece has." And the mood of the artist can be conveyed in the colors they choose.

Friedrich wants his students to experience art not just to finish a project to meet deadlines. "This isn't like math where it's step by step."